young American, the fruit of scant "modelling," who
could give her nothing but pocket-money, was a very moderate prize,
and if she had been prepared to marry for ambition--there was no such
hardness in her face or tone, but then there never is--her mark would
be inevitably a "personage" quelconque. I was received at my friend's
lodging with the announcement that she had left Homburg with her
daughter half an hour before. The good woman who had entertained the
pair professed to know nothing of their movements beyond the fact that
they had gone to Frankfort, where, however, it was her belief that they
didn't intend to remain. They were evidently travelling beyond. Sudden,
their decision to move? Oh yes, the matter of a moment. They must have
spent the night in packing, they had so many things and such pretty
ones; and their poor maid, all the morning, had scarce had time to
swallow her coffee. But they clearly were ladies accustomed to come and
go. It didn't matter--with such rooms as hers she never wanted: there
was a new family coming in at three.

IV

This piece of strategy left me staring and made me, I must confess,
quite furious. My only consolation was that Archie, when I told him,
looked as blank as myself, and that the trick touched him more nearly,
for I was not now in love with Louisa. We agreed that we required an
explanation and we pretended to expect one the next day in the shape of
a letter satisfactory even to the point of being apologetic. When I say
"we" pretended I mean that I did, for my suspicion that he knew what had
been on foot--through an arrangement with Linda--lasted only a moment.
If his resentment was less than my own his surprise was equally great.
I had been willing to bolt, but I felt slighted by the ease with which
Mrs. Pallant had shown she could part with us. Archie professed no
sense of a grievance, because in the first place he was shy about it and
because in the second it was evidently not definite to him that he had
been encouraged--equipped as he was, I think, with no very particular
idea of what constituted encouragement. He was fresh from the wonderful
country in which there may between the ingenuous young be so little
question of "intentions." He was but dimly conscious of his own and
could by no means have told me whether he had been challenged or been
jilted. I didn't want to exasperate him, but when at the end of three
days more we were still without news of our late c